Colorado legislators once again are siding with local car dealers over national auto makers.

At a hearing late Wednesday, every member of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to approve a bill that requires all automobile manufacturer franchise agreements to conform to current franchise law rather than to meet the legal requirements when the contract was signed, despite officials from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers (AAM) calling the measure an “extraordinary” and “shocking” shift of the balance of power.

The newest effort marks the fourth time in the past five years that the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association (CADA) has brought a bill to the Legislature to give dealers more power in their negotiations with the national and international companies that supply them their products. The efforts — all successful — have included bills to bar manufacturers from requiring major dealership upgrades more than once every seven years and to require that auto makers that closed dealerships due to bankruptcy to give those dealers first right of refusal if they reopen a franchise in the area. The right-of-refusal bill resulted in a lawsuit against the state.

All these efforts date to decisions by Chrysler and General Motors to close 40 Colorado dealerships during the Great Recession, including those of dealers who claimed they were profitable. Sen. David Balmer, a Centennial Republican cosponsoring Senate Bill 265 with Democratic Sen. Andy Kerr of Lakewood, said many of the franchise agreements now in place are “one-sided ... take-it-or-leave it contracts.”

SB 265 clarifies that any agreement between a manufacturer and dealer must meet current law, such as the laws from recent years, even if it was signed before such laws were adopted.

Mike Feeley, an attorney speaking on behalf of CADA, said the law is necessary to ensure that owners of pre-2010 agreements are not subject to lengthy audits of their records and to requirements to upgrade facilities more than once a year under the guise that such requirements were allowed when their agreements were signed. Feeley and CADA president/CEO Tim Jackson did not cite specific examples of dealers who have been subject to such demands but spoke in general terms.

But Renee Wadsworth, AAM senior manager of state affairs, said dealers have not reported any such problems in Colorado. She said it was “offensive” to see a dealer handout claiming that manufacturers were not following state law.

And David Bright, state affairs counsel for the AAM, said no state in the country has passed a retroactive law as far-reaching as SB 265, which cuts away at the sanctity of contracts and the terms under which both dealers and manufacturers believe they can be profitable.

“That’s extraordinary. I haven’t seen this done in any other state and it’s frankly shocking to me,” Bright said. “I would classify it as a deal that gives car dealers in the state a tremendous amount of power to go back to the Legislature and ask it to change contracts that both parties already have signed.”

Those words held no sway with committee members, however. Sen. Steve King, R-Grand Junction, said the bill is needed to protect a local industry that was battered in the recession, and Sen. Irene Aguilar, D-Denver, said there should be an opportunity to evaluate again what contract terms are in the best interests of all parties.

So, now the bill goes forward to what seems almost-certain approval by the Legislature. And the question again may become whether a court will determine how dealers and auto makers will interact in Colorado.